By Dan Ambrose: WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (29-0, 17 KOs) will be facing IBF World super light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson (33-2-1, 17 KOs) in a unification match on April 11th on NBC as part of his manager Al Haymon’s “Premier Boxing Champions” series. Haymon is all of a sudden putting together some good fights, as a month earlier on March 7th he has two excellent fights between Robert Guerrero and Keith Thurman as well as Adrien Broner going up against John Molina.
The Peterson vs. Garcia fight actually isn’t a fight that a ton of boxing fans are calling for right now, but it’s at least better than Garcia’s last fight against little lightweight fringe contender Rod Salka. Garcia hasn’t shown much interest in stepping it up against the top welterweights despite doing a lot of talking about wanting to move up in weight last year.
Peterson is at least a bump up from Salka, but clearly a big step down from Garcia’s fight against Lucas Matthysse. Peterson was blown out by Matthysse in three rounds in May of 2013, so you can understand why boxing fans might not be as excited about a Garcia-Peterson fight as Haymon would want them to be. To be sure, it’s a unification fight, but it’s more like a fight between Garcia a paper champion at best.
It was pretty obvious that fans would wind up seeing the Garcia-Peterson fight in the near future when the two fighters were put on the same card last August at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Both guys were setup in terrible mismatches that Showtime agreed to televise. Peterson got a punching bag in Edgar Santana, and Garcia fought little Rod Salka.
Both fights were nearly unwatchable and very disappointing. But now that Haymon has Garcia and Peterson on his own card, he’s put them on NBC and it’ll give casual boxing fans a chance to see the two fighters. It would still be a lot more interesting to see Garcia fight a rematch against Matthysse with a good referee working the fight to keep Garcia from getting away with the frequent low blows and holding that he did all night in order to beat Matthysse.
Garcia-Matthysse is a far better fight than Garcia vs. Peterson, but Garcia doesn’t want to face Matthysse again despite their fight being close. Peterson also has a title in his possession, so Garcia will get a chance to win that belt and then brag that he has three of the four titles at 140.
The only one that he wouldn’t have is the WBO strap, and it’s unlikely that he ever will unless he wants to do business with Top Rank and face the likes of Terence Crawford. I think it’s safe to say that Garcia won’t want to take that fight.
Peterson has won his last two fights since his loss to Matthysse. He beat the untested Dierry Jean by a 12 round unanimous decision last year in January, and then after that he defeated a very average fighter named Edgar Santana last August in the card filled with mismatches on Showtime.
Garcia, 26, was given a gift decision over Mauricio Herrera last year in March in a fight that Garcia clearly lost in Puerto Rico. The judges gave Garcia a win by a 12 round majority decision, but the boxing world saw it as Garcia losing the fight.
What was interesting is that Garcia refused to give Herrera a rematch even though it’s something that would have helped clear Garcia’s name by giving him a chance to erase the stink of controversy surrounding his win over Herrera. Needless to say, Garcia has lot a lot of his popularity with boxing fans in the last year much in the same way light heavyweight Adonis Stevenson’s popularity has taken a huge hit.
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